


A Series of Magical Oneshots

by edenkings



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:44:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 4,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8517253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenkings/pseuds/edenkings
Summary: A few years ago I wrote a few things for the LivesandLiesofWizards Tumblr blog which is now defunct. I thought to post them here, along with a few unpublished shorts. 
My wizarding World is not nice. Reader discretion advised.





	1. Chapter 1

**Behind Diagon:**

 

Behind Diagon, there is a place where even the denizens of Knockturn won’t go. The slums of the magical world – Haphazard Alley and Jumble Square – and _those_ are the nicer parts. In Birmingham it’s called Tanner’s Court, in Manchester it’s Raven Way.

The really bad bits don’t rate a name.

Watch your step. And mind your own business.

Here live the scum. The poorest goblins, half-trolls, foreigners, the ugly veeli, a few werewolves and hags. Those of unknown parentage and indistinguishable race.

There is no magical castle, no pretty-wife-three-children and a happy ending.

For every wealthy, privileged snot of a pureblood, there are _ten_ less fortunate in this world – don’t you believe the lies of the ministry census – no pureblooded-for-five-generations ministry man tells anything like truth.

No pureblooded-for-five-generations ministry man could come down here and live to tell about the experience.

_Three_ of that ten, are the half-bloods, or purebloods of minor families. Another _one_ is muggleborn – oh you’ll find a few of those down here, for there aren’t any jobs if you don’t have the _connections,_ old chap. _One_ is a goblin. Gringott’s clan. Equally wealthy privileged snots quite happy to hold the wizarding economy in their greedy fingers.

The remaining _five_ , you’ll find in slums. Wandless and wordless, in the grand scheme of things.

But isn’t the world oh so magical?

 


	2. Chapter 2

**The Many Lives of Tom Riddle:**

In one world, Tom Riddle dies on a summer’s day, killed by his own sickly green curse.

In another world, Tom Riddle dies on a summer night, as the German bombs claim Wool’s orphanage and everyone in her.

In yet another world, an unnamed baby boy is buried in the depths of winter along with his unidentified mother in the pauper’s section of a poor London churchyard.

In this world, Tom Riddle is born just like his counterparts, in London, on the thirty-first of December, nineteen-twenty-six. Like her counterparts, Merope Gaunt Riddle does not survive the night.

But in this world, Merope was never so deluded as to believe in her husband’s love, and, as all things change, Henry Thomas Riddle (Tommy for short), arrives in Little Hangleton, the home of his forefathers, on the fifteenth of January, nineteen twenty-seven.

“Well, then,” says his grandfather (the Henry for whom he is named), “We had better make the most of it.”

His grandmother sniffs, “At least the boy is healthy.”

In this world, Henry Thomas Riddle receives a Hogwarts letter. His grandparents are shocked. His father, with dawning angry revelation, is less so. Henry is less than impressed with the offered curriculum, and so heads for Eton as planned in September.

In another world, Tom Riddle is not wise enough to carry a broom the first time he visits the depths of The Chamber of Secrets, and his skeleton lies there forever.

But in this world, it is a baby girl born in the orphanage, and the name that is hissed on dying breath is not Tom, but “Maia… for my… mother.”

Maia is a quiet child, studious and neat. She is not a nasty, unfriendly, bullying child, for it is not ladylike to be so. Boys might be allowed to hide away to brew cruel thoughts, but it is the nineteen thirties, and the girls are kept busy with their chores – sewing, cooking and the laundry.

Maia finds her niche in the nursery. Here, she is taught patience and compassion. She is also taught to hide her remarkable intelligence, but never quite succeeds. She finds joy in first steps, first words, and that the orphanage children are some of the best behaved and cleverest in school.

She is surprised to receive her Hogwarts letter, but very pleased to meet Mr Dumbledore, for he looks terribly wise, and Maia does so dearly love to learn.

In this world, Maia Smith (not one of those Smiths, for she is Muggle-born) studies healing, founds a magical orphanage, teaches potions for many years, and becomes headmistress of Hogwarts.

In another world, Merope adds the ashwinder eggs to the Amortentia before she takes the potion from the fire - it is the last mistake she ever makes.

In one world, much like in the first world, Tom Riddle spends his first years in the orphanage, growing crueller by the day. He is a liar and a bully and a thief.

One winter’s day he steals from the right person. The professor is a canny man, an archaeologist used to the beggar boys of such foreign places as India and Egypt. He holds Tom’s wrist and remarks that they’d take his hands for theft, were they in the East. Tom is terrified and angry - he cannot burn this man, cannot bend him to his will (in the first world, Tom would feel much the same meeting Albus Dumbledore for the first time. In this world, Tom is but seven years of age and not yet set onto his path)… and he is intrigued. The professor knows of magic, but he is not a wizard. He knows of troubled young boys, for he was one. And he offers a home, even if it is the travelling kind.

Tom learns magic from shamans and wisemen the world around. He speaks ten languages (if you count the language of snakes – Tom does). He realises the value of people, rather than their labels. He learns to love and be loved, and most of all, he learns the horror of human suffering.

Tom returns to England as a young man, and discovers quite by accident in a book the description of his mentor’s prized amulet – a terribly valuable charm against magical attack.


	3. Chapter 3

**An Excerpt from _A Compendium of Dark Lords and Ladies in Modern Times,_ by Thaddeus Trimble _(Spellstone Publishing, 1987)_**

It was an innocent likeness taken of a graduate from Hogwarts. It was the done thing, of course, in that oppressively hot summer of 1841, to be seen going into Mr. Daguerre’s shop on Spring Lane.

Even if he _was_ a Frenchman.*

And even if everyone knew that these new prints were nothing like the _true_ resemblances one could achieve from portraiture - they didn’t even move.

Eveline Cordery had been a Ravenclaw, like all Corderys. She had taken 10 OWLS, and 6 NEWTS; the family were very proud. Now, as her father insisted, she needed to be presented to Society, find a nice husband, and settle down.

Eveline’s dreams were a little… different. She had no interest in marriage, or children. A quintessential Ravenclaw, Eveline liked to _know_ things.

It started innocently enough. When her cat Maud, pictured here, died not long after the picture was taken, Eveline directed her grieving curiosity at death. Why had her cat died? Could her cat’s death been changed? Could it be ‘fixed’? It was this research that led to the accidental reanimation of the cat’s skeleton.  It is this grotesque familiar that accompanied the Dark Lady Eve during the peak of her reign in the late 1840s.

Her followers were fellow Ravenclaws, disgruntled at the increasing restrictions on research enacted by the newly formed Department of Mysteries. They called Eve the ‘lifebringer’ for her skill at reanimating and controlling the corpses of man and animal alike.

The Dark Lady and her inner circle were finally brought down in 1851 by a team of Aurors led by Tossyn Moody, but the damage done to the reputation of Ravenclaw house led to the ostracism of that house for nearly a century, before the reputation as ‘the house of evildoers’ shifted to Slytherin House following the rise of support for the Dark Lord Voldemort in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

 

*In truth, “Mr Daguerre” was nothing of the kind, being a squib of no family from _Cardiff_ of all places, something all the Families were quite outraged about. Nobody, of course, was at all concerned over the theft of the invention, after all, the real Mr. Daguerre was only a muggle.


	4. Chapter 4

**A Magical Mystery amidst Muggles (Appendix 81G, Notable Families, _Hogwarts, A History)_**

The Eandish family, of Cokeham in Sussex, can trace their ancestry back to the twelfth century – a respectable genealogical endeavour by any family’s standards.

In late 1787, Percy Eandish, the only child of Henry Eandish, married Mary Brennan, only daughter of Thomas Brennan, lately rector of the Farnton Parish.

Their marriage was a happy, fruitful, but short-lived one. Eight children were born, as follows:

-Thomas (b. 1788)  
\- Henry (b. 1789)  
\- Mary (b. 1790)  
\- Edith and Louisa (b. 1791)  
\- Jane (b. 1793)  
\- Percy (b. 1795)  
\- Catherine (b. 1798)

Sadly, Mary Brennan Eandish did no long survive the birth of her youngest child.

In 1799, Thomas Eandish became the first child of the Eandish family to receive an invitation to study at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and wizardry. However, it was not long before his siblings followed in turn.

The Eandish family still hold the record for the greatest number of siblings to attend Hogwarts concurrently – 7 siblings, all bar the youngest, Catherine, in the year 1805 – although the record for the most siblings attending Hogwarts belongs to the Bishop family, of Dorset, where 10 brothers and sisters attended between the years of 1760 and 1788, as follows:

\- Jonathan (b. 1749)  
\- Robert (b. 1750)  
\- Jane (b. 1752)  
\- William (b. 1755)  
\- Anne (b. 1757)  
\- Catherine (b. 1760)  
\- Frances (b. 1762)  
\- Margaret (b. 1763)  
\- Henrietta (b. 1767)  
\- Louisa (b. 1770)

The truly remarkable thing about both families, however, is that none of the parents, nor any known ancestor of either, had a drop of magical blood running through their veins! While it has been proven that it is not uncommon for muggleborn to have siblings or cousins who are also themselves magical, such a degree of magical talent from previously mundane families had never before been demonstrated, nor has it since occurred.

Unfortunately, a dragonpox outbreak in Dorset in 1785 claimed the lives of Jonathan and Robert Bishop and their families, along with their unmarried sisters, Catherine, Frances, Margaret, Henrietta and Louisa. William Bishop and his descendants form the Bishop family, who have since been stalwarts of Magical Society (for more information, see _The Bishops of Dorset, by Ariadne Bishop,_ Phoenix Press, 1988). Jane Bishop Bones married Edgarius Bones in 1770, with no issue, and Anne Bishop Morton and family emigrated to the Colonies in 1780, and settled in Pennington, Massachusetts, where the Morton family are much respected.

As for the Eandish family – they have not remained a family of Name and Note, as the Bishops have done, as none of the main branch survive; nevertheless the name commands respect with many hundreds of witches and wizards claiming ancestry to one or other of the Eandish siblings.


	5. Chapter 5

**Polite Society**

If you asked Sapphire, she might have explained that magic hummed and sang along her veins.

Her older sister, Opal, would pooh-pooh this as ridiculous, for her grasp of magic was almost ruthlessly arithmantical. Ravenclaw, you know. A bit of a scandal but hardly surprising and really it does happen even in the best families.

The youngest sister, Ruby, would not answer at all. She had become quite adept, as much as a ten year old might be, at diverting those awkward questions, Ruby was perfectly convinced she had no magic at all. One doesn’t mention such things in Polite Society, and Mama has drilled them ruthlessly in such things as Manners and Decorous Behaviour.

Ruby does not go to Hogwarts, and does not go out into polite society. Ruby does not go anywhere at all.

Mama dabs her eyes decorously with a lacy handkerchief embroidered with her initials as the mourners file past.

Dreadful business, Mrs. Selwyn, they say, how awful to be struck down just as she was to go to Hogwarts.

Everyone understands the necessity. One does what one must in Polite Society.


	6. Chapter 6

**An excerpt:**

Tongues, by _Sylvanus Gottlingen (1985), Spellcaster Press, Sydney_.

_Three lines of Parseltongue speakers had once called Great Britain and Ireland home, although recent genealogical study has suggested a common ancestor to all three lines…_

_…Of these lines, the most well known is that of Slytherin, due to the founding of that pre-eminent institution all know, Hogwarts. This line appears to have become extinct during the 1940s, with the death of the last recorded heir, Morfin Gaunt, in 1949 (UK MoM)._

_Another line is that of  Paidraig, or, in the latin Partus, who has been widely lauded in muggle folklore for the driving out of the snakes from Ireland. In truth, Ireland was never inhabited by any form of serpent bar the magical, and now extinct Apparating Adder. Padraig and his descendants were famed breeders of this specie, and are widely considered by magizoologists to be the sole reason for the survival of the Adder into the 18 th century following widespread destruction of natural habitats over the preceeding centuries. Sadly, the parseltongue trait is no longer extant in the living descendants of the family, and with the dying out of parseltongue, so too did the Apparating Adder._

_A third line, suspected to be related to the above through an illegitimate son of Padraig became known in Shropshire during the 1490s. The Patmore family  were potioneers by trade and earned considerable wealth from providing apothecaries in Britain and abroad with highest quality snake fangs._ _However, this line became extinct during the Arsenius vs. Patmore trials of 1805-7, at the height of the anti-dark magic crusade, when the remaining 12 members of this family were executed for treason against the British Ministry of Magic. It is not within the scope of this publication to discuss the appropriateness of these convictions, but the authors feel it necessary to include that among those executed were four children under the age of nine, the youngest just five months of age._


	7. Chapter 7

**Kiwi wizards are pretty much what you'd expect:**

Tama is a good boy – eats his _kai_ when he is told to, and he is always polite to his _kuia._ He listens to the stories his ma’s ma tells about the ancestors without a fidget, even though _kuia_ is old and failing. Well, not many, anyway.

He grows up on the deeds of _Maui_ , and the stories of the canoes that brought all of their people from _Hawai’iki_ – Atlantis, as the _pakeha_  - call it.

He has learnt his _whakapapa_ well, and he knows the places where he belongs by the time he is four. His older brother claims _Ruapehu_ as his mountain– the biggest and loudest of the central volcanoes. His sister claims _Ngauruhoe_ as the fairest and most beautiful. Tama has always felt _Tongariro_ as his own. Shadowed by bigger and prettier siblings, but capable of much.

When he is old enough ( _whitu_ , he counts on his fingers; _tahi, rua, toru, wha, rima, ono_ … finally, _whitu_ ), he is allowed a pet. A baby _taniwha_. He names it Richie after the best rugby player ever.

He is thirteen when he starts at school – it is a small _pa_ on the banks of the _Whanganui_ just upstream of Jerusalem. There aren’t many children here, only eight of an age, but most are Maori like him.

There are the other schools for witches and wizards – in the south island ( _Te Wai Pounamu_ ) there’s Cook Academy where the white kids go, and up north is _Tamaki_  for the Maori and Pasifika kids. In the summer they play Quidditch, and in winter they play rugby.

Tama grows up into a good man. He leaves school with Level 3 NCEA (just), 8 Moa’s (Magical Ordinary Achievements), and decides he’s probably not going to go to university. He’s no Richie (still the best rugby player ever), but he plays for _Manawatu_ for a while (both at rugby and at Quidditch). 

He’d be the first to call himself a pretty ordinary bloke, nothing special.

There’s a minor problem with a dark lord and a ring, but that story can be told some other time.


	8. Chapter 8

**When your research is not sufficiently fruitful or bloody:**

There are those who have their deeds immortalised in song, in statue, in dry history books, and on chocolate frog cards.

Cowan is not one of those.

His greatest claim to fame is disputed! Indeed, is it the driving out of the werewolves of Heidelburg? The defeat of a nest of vampires near Cardiff? His slaying of a dragon in Porto?

(An unfortunate accident involving a spill of a vat of stewed aconite, a campfire that got a little out of hand, and well, the dragon thing just didn’t happen at all. Completely  100% made up.)

Indeed, Cuthbert Binns (aged 64 and very much still alive at this particular point in time) was forced to concede that this rumoured Cowan fellow never in fact existed at all. Not a jot of evidence for it.

There was no deficit in any of history for a scholar looking for excitement; heroic deeds, bloodshed, damage and general gore. But none to be found here. Hmm, perhaps the goblin wars might be more fruitful?


	9. Chapter 9

**It taketh more, than only four, to found the finest school!**

__

_A thousand years it has now been, since I was sewn into;_   
_A hat to sit upon a head - I’ve seen a thing or two._   
_I sing a song before I sort, from my perch upon this stool_   
_So listen hard, and I’ll tell all, the story of the school._

_It’s not a song you’ve heard before, nor told I, in any case._   
_‘Twas many more, than founders four, whose deeds did shape this place._   
_The names you know are noble ones, Ladies Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw,_   
_Of title or of land, had they, Lords Slytherin, Gryffindor._

_They dreamed a dream impossible, the fondest wish of each,_   
_To build a school, a place to learn, invent, discover, teach._   
_And so Hogwarts rose from the ground, built strong in wood and stone,_   
_by the toil of the Founders; but they did not stand alone._

_For Courage does not stoke a fire, or Bravery bake your bread,_   
_Fairness has never swept a hall, Nor ambition made a bed._   
_Cunning does not wash your clothes, nor cleverness sow a seed_   
_To teach requires others to fulfil more mundane needs._

_Red Annora was the baker, and her husband Hugh the cook,_  
 _Tall Gundred ran the laundries, with Waleran binding book._  
 _Maryam ran the castle soon, as Ravenclaw found to train,_  
 _The students, she had then no time, to stand as chatelaine._  
  
_Riding far and wide in search, of others to bring in,_  
 _Was Ranulf the witchfinder, and his trusty steed Munin._  
 _Conal and his Merlin’s Men, stood in defence of all,_  
 _Sword in hand, or bow ready, upon the outer wall._

_It was Maud the little princess, who became the very first of all,_   
_To pass through the doors of Hogwarts, and walk through hallowed hall._   
_Never had a House, did she, not of any sort,_   
_And by all the founders four, had Maud the First been taught._

_Oh, the years, it was but ten, when the Four agreed,_   
_And the finest years, they were, my friends, so very fine indeed._   
_But the raging wars beyond the walls had slowly crept on in._   
_Fear and doubt spawned fighting between the closest of kin._

_Friend against friend, and house against house,_  
 _Parent against child, and spouse against spouse!_  
  
_The arguments were wilder, and the words more hurtful still,_  
 _And none knew how to fix the breaks, and worse it became until:_  
 _One dark day the words were gone, and spells said in their stead,_  
 _By someone’s hand, and none knew who, did Maud the First lie dead._

 _With that deed, all did know, that this could not go on,_  
 _And before the sun had set again, Slytherin was gone._  
 _‘Twas his beliefs, he did say, most different from the rest,_  
 _And if something must change, perhaps, his leaving would be best._  
  
_So for another decade, did teach the founders three,_  
 _And I sorted students, as they were given to me_  
 _But I watched with every child I sorted to Slytherin,_  
 _Three faces filled up with regret, for what was, what could have been._

_It was Ravenclaw who passed on first, from a life lived well._   
_Then Gryffindor, as he oft-wished, with one last fight, he fell._   
_For many years did Hufflepuff, remain here as the last,_   
_Hopeful of the future but regretful of the past._

_Of Slytherin, left long ago, his fate is still unknown,_   
_The other three wished him the best and hope he found a home,_   
_So students, don’t take up a senseless old, dead rivalry,_   
_Lest you find you also lose, in four becoming three._

_Waleran stood the head of school for another dozen year,_  
Many since have come in the dream of teaching students here,  
And a thousand thousand students have come to learn here too  
From founders four, through centuries, unbroken lines to you.  
  
 


	10. Chapter 10

**A Magical Geography, complete with colonialist racism:**

 

Blaise Zabini is seven when he is introduced to the idea of the world outside of Britain. Until this time, his world is only the estate where he lives (the first of Mother’s husbands), and the estates of those families his mother deems acceptable company.

It is his mother’s fourth husband who speaks of it for the first time, raising the subject of his mother’s ancestry.

 _We are the children of the Moors_ , his mother tells him later, her hand cool against his cheek and her perfume sweet in his nose. _Do not forget, my son, we are the sons and daughters of kings and queens of magic_.

That night Blaise finds his way to the library and finds a dusty history of the Moors of Magic and an equally dusty atlas.

It is his mother’s fifth husband who raises the subject for the second time. Eumenedes Selwyn is not a clever man, nor did fifty years in the Department of International Magical Cooperation teach him tolerance. He is not particularly tolerant of Blaise, but Blaise is confident in his mother’s ability to arrange her affairs – after all, did she not marry Selwyn less than a month after his inheritance of an uncle’s fortune?

Blaise is ten, and he has just received his Hogwarts letter. As such, he is permitted to attend the Malfoy’s dinner party for their son.

“Britain, _everyone knows_ , is at the forefront of magical achievement,” comes the voice of his red-faced  stepfather, punctuated by the thump of a wineglass onto the table. “Nobody else has done anything worthy of merit!”

In the Germanic states, the various Ministries have reached an accord. Magic deemed non-conforming or inefficient must be stamped out. Every student must be taught to the standard curriculum. Deviation is unacceptable.

In the Russias, the people never really recovered from the prosecution of magicals and the upheaval of the 1910s and 1920s. Shrunken old grandmothers teach their grandchildren by the fire, with the wands of long dead uncles and aunties. There are no schools and books are scarce.

In Central Asia, there is ongoing genocide of the magical. But here, magic is subtler, and old, too, older than almost anywhere else. Magic is woven into cloth, brewed into potions. People gather quietly to tell stories of the old ways and old days.

South of that, charms and amulets become the means of magic. Oh, there are potioneers here too, some of the best. And the Thai have the best runic warding schemes since the Babylonians.

Native Oceanic wizards are a myth, according to the ICW. But really, there are thousands of them, they’re just not interested in your “civilised” magic.

Nobody’s quite sure how the governance of the Middle East works. Nor the schooling. Certainly not the magic. It changes at every appearance on the world stage, and contradicts in the same newspaper article. The only thing anyone’s sure of at all, is that nothing follows muggle country borders, and that they seem to have everything sorted out quite nicely. And they’re really very good at Quidditch.

In North America, they don’t play Quidditch. Instead they practice slavery (of humans, how positively medieval) and death-duels are legal. There are no Native American wizards. Not anymore. That did not survive the depredation of the European powers. You’re surprised? Don’t be. After all, who else could but come here, but those who were driven out? The muggleborn, the half-bloods, the third and fourth sons seeking a better life were too naive, really, and certainly they were no match for those families whose… practices… needed no longer be tolerated in Civilised England.

The remains of the magical empires – Mayan, Inca of South America and Maratha of India, have no wish for anyone to poke anything anywhere near their affairs. So remove such, or they will.

… hardly great at all, you see.

Blaise Zabini smiles his pureblooded smile at Draco Malfoy, and agrees.


	11. Chapter 11

**Hufflepuff Alumni:**

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man who is content with his situation in life feels not the fickle winds of society’s opinion, and Demetrius Carlon is no exception.

When Memory Carlon arrives at Hogwarts in the autumn of her first year, it is the scandal of 1796. She is sorted into Hufflepuff like generations of Carlons before her, and makes her way through school as Hufflepuffs are wont to do – with average marks and quiet industriousness. Memory is in every way unexceptional, and, as it turns out, so are her five siblings. She marries out of school to an equally colourless younger son of a respectable family, and has nondescript children.

Her father has every right to be proud with such industrious Hufflepuffishness, but of course, he hasn’t been seen in _polite_ society for quite some time - nobody who is _anybody_ could invite him anywhere, of course. The mother! Oh! The mother – a muggle!


End file.
